A victory would cap a remarkable year for debut author Obreht, who became the youngest ever winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in June at the age of 25 and revealed that she did not feel she had earned the award.

The winners of all four categories of the National Book Awards will be named in a ceremony in New York on November 16th.

Last year's National Book Awards fiction prize was won by Jaimy Gordon'sLord of Misrule, which was an outsider for the award but was favoured by the judging panel for being 'vivid, memorable, and linguistically rich'.